Month: November 2013

Been using my Microsoft Surface for close to 2 months, and I must say the Windows Store has improved in terms of availability of apps. It definitely can’t compete with the App Store (iOS) or the Play Store (Android), but it does have some interesting apps.

It looks pretty now, at least? 🙂

The app store can definitely improve in terms of responsiveness and categorization of apps, but it’s better than before – Windows 8.1 brought the much needed update.

Note Anytime

I’ve been looking for a solution to real, useful annotating on PDFs (Adobe Reader and a handful of others only allow addition of comments that do not display unless you tap them), and while Drawboard PDF is a real solution, it lags so much on the original Surface RT I’m not even gonna mention it here. Note Anytime is a viable replacement, and a good one at that; while it doesn’t draw on PDFs itself, it allows importing of PDFs and allows a set of powerful annotation tools for the average student.

There’s a palm rejection feature which I really like – as I’m using the Adonit Jot Pro (real good stylus!), it allows me to place my palm on the highlighted area when I write words.As the screenshot says.

Note Anytime is one of the most versatile note-taking applications I’ve used on Windows RT and I definitely recommend any student with a Windows tablet to give it a try.

Readiy

Now that Google Reader has closed down, Feedly’s a really great alternative – and Readiy is the perfect Feedly client for the Windows RT. A beautiful metro interface that just works – I needn’t say more.

The only gripe I have with it is the lack of mark as read as you scroll – I’m not sure whether it’s available in the Pro version, but I’m not paying for any Windows RT apps yet.. Yeah.

(And at this point of writing this review, my Surface started acting like a mad man and I had to restart it. Seriously, Microsoft?)

Clouder

For those of you who use SoundCloud, I encourage you to give Clouder a try – it’s a beautiful SoundCloud client that streams music in the background while you do other things – neat for a relaxing work day.

Honourable mention: Hyper for YouTube

Hyper’s the best YouTube client I’ve used on the Surface RT so far, but it still has its problems so I’m not giving a full review here. Try it yourself! (and I’m pretty sure you’ll want a YouTube client for your tablet.. so go ahead. Haha.)

(And I finally wrote this post – the title of the post has been ringing in my head for a month at least? It’s good to take a break from my busy work life to do simple things like this. Hope you find it useful!)